


Seasons

by TheOriginalSuki



Series: Jonsa: A Dream of Spring [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 13:29:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19252168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOriginalSuki/pseuds/TheOriginalSuki
Summary: "April is the cruelest month." -- T.S. Eliot***Day 1 Jonsa: A Dream of SpringSeasons





	Seasons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orangeflavor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeflavor/gifts).



 

  _"April is the cruelest month." -- T.S. Eliot,_ The Waste Land

 

A garden blooms in Sansa.  She knows because sometimes, if she stills, she can discern the seasons.  Autumn crinkles crisp and chill; she snaps through her days with the shortness of waning sunlight.  Summer opens worlds of possibilities and everything inside her keels toward unbridled growth.

_Spring_

After internal deadness, externally blackened with bruises, Sansa shakes awake the dormant things, and Theon.  Their escape is brutal, like the brutality thrust on a germinated seed, pushing itself into the uncaring air.  Still, these things must be done.

The deadened bits have to be hacked away; Winterfell, eventually Theon, especially the stupid little girl with stupid dreams.  Brienne is midwife guiding this new Sansa to birth.  And Sansa might as well be naked, shivering in the courtyard of Castle Black.  Jon's stricken face imprints on her; it's the sun, and she thinks, turn toward it; keep reaching, climbing; it gives life.

_Summer_

They're together, even though they're in limbo.  Even in the belly of summer, winter's threat whispers: the dead are coming.

Jon and Sansa test their boundaries.  They test each other.  Thunderstorms are frequent but fleeting.  When the rain recedes, she is refreshed, if breathless.  Mostly, though, she bathes in the ease of being, a bather in sunlight.  It is easy to be Jon's wife, especially when no one notices -- including them.

_Autumn_

But Jon has to leave, as sure as the sun turns its indifferent rays away come solstice.  Inevitability never tasted so treacherous.  The things they nurtured together in the soft summertime of her soul fall off.  He knows she is displeased, how could she hide her displeasure?  Does the frost-scorched leaf let go of its lifeline to the tree?  Or does it cling for days, weeks even, becoming all the more beautiful in bloods and oranges?

How can she draw back the sun?

When she tells Tyrion that day, standing on the battlements, there are reasons as many as migrating birds.  But the thing that aligns them, v-ing them toward their destination, is one: get back Jon.  Get him back whole.

_Winter_

She enters into a period of hibernation.  Mechanisms fall back on instinct.  She rules, and she rules well.  But she is alone.  Her beloved dead are a clumsy, absent company.

Oh, she survives well enough.  The wintertime in her inner garden is beautiful, even invigorating.  That's to her credit; she can make even the barrenness bear fruit.  She doesn't need anybody, no.  But the sweetness of summer haunts her waking days, and she holds the ghost close to her because it would be worse to forget.  Naming the ache is its own kind of salve.

_Spring_

 

One day, she goes to the godswood to pray.  Beneath sprawling red foliage, something dark waits sitting.  It is Jon, and she doesn't know what she will do until it's done.  She closes the space between them -- grabs his face in her hands -- and kisses him.  Hard.  He doesn't move but he doesn't pull away.

They blink at each other, nocturnal creatures suddenly thrust into light.

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

"No.  Not the way a sister loves a brother."  Because it's true, and subterfuge does not take root between them.  "The way my mother loved Father."  She comes to know it even as she says it.  They both learn it together.

"I--" his eyes flicker downward.  "What do you want me to say?"

"You don't have to say anything.  Or do anything.  Or  _be_ anything.  Just let me love you."

His eyes return hesitantly to her.  His look is an open wound.  She recognises it as the raw wound of one thrust back to life without warning.  How many times, between them, have they died and resurrected?  His hands rise up and cover hers, still cradling his face.  He nods.

_Summer_

It takes time, but muscle memory prevails, and they find their rhythm.  Sansa is fierce and devoted -- in her care for her people, in her care for Jon.  She prunes away what weighs him down, if she can; if he lets her near enough to do it.

There are no more kisses after the first.  She's not sure if he could turn away, and so she can't take the risk.  She'd rather bleed out than become the very things that wrecked her.  Still, some nights she twists into her pillow at the knife-point of nightmares.  In the worst of them, Jon is distant and sterile; then he goes altogether.  Less harrowing are the ones where he weds.  His bride is faceless, dismissive of her; but Sansa still hangs in the orbit of his warmth, and that is enough.

One night they visit the crypts together.  Sansa lays flowers into the open, empty hands of the statues.  Jon peers under furrowed brows at the stone face of his mother.  He speaks, threading life into the damp-soil smell of the dead: 

"Let's have a child."

Sansa feels each season spinning, wheeling in succession through her, blacks and greens and crimsons, years and years, until eons have sped beneath her.  She has to ground herself.  Both of them.

"Jon," she says, carefully, "you -- we aren't --  _married_."

"Oh."  He inclines his head. "No.  I keep forgetting."  A pause.  Then, a smile, which is a secret all her own -- the first-fruits of summer.  "Let's do that, too."

**Author's Note:**

> For the Jonsa: A Dream of Spring tumblr festival.  
> Day 1: Seasons
> 
> I just need these two to be Cat and Ned 2.0, okay?
> 
> Honestly, if they just lived in an eternal season 6 suspended between time and place, I'd be happy.
> 
> (I wasn't even a Jonsa shipper until I watched season 6. Actually, probably after, after it all settled and that growing feeling crashed in on me like, "oh hell, I want them together, don't I?" I didn't ask for it, they delivered and dropped it into my lap on a silver platter. I mean, what am I supposed to do with that? Ahem. Okay, I'm done.)


End file.
